Friday, June 13, 2008

The Agile Stack

I spent most of this week at the Mark Logic User Conference. One of their slogans is "Agile Content." It's an appropriate phrase. Mark Logic provides an XML repository with an XQuery interface and blazing fast indexes. The beauty of developing applications with Mark Logic is that you can load it up with any content, with or without a schema, and go. Add new types of content, modify existing structures and keep going. Easy to work with, easy to modify, agile.

This was a constant theme from presenters, people experienced building complex applications with Mark Logic. They raved about the flexibility, about iterating, about developing production applications rapidly. They were raving about a technology that naturally enables an agile development process.

Taking this a step further, Dan McCreary is promoting XRX, XForms - REST - XQuery. Dan explains how XRX removes the data impedance mismatch of classic architectures. Forget about OR mapping, in XRX everything is XML. I believe this type of data alignment creates an agile technology stack. But wait, there is more!

What if you had process, tools, and technology that were naturally supportive of an agile development process? Take one part eXtreme Programming, one part wiki documentation, and one part XRX. Blend into Agile Stack. Would there be noticeable benefits? I haven't seen this full stack in action but I have a hunch...